Popularity Of 'Song Of South' Has Weathered Racial Tempests

ATLANTA — Forty years ago when Walt Disney's Song of the South premiered in Atlanta, the star of the movie could not attend because no hotel would give him a room. James Baskett, the star, was black.

So much for a zip-a-dee-doo-dah affair.

''I was absolutely horrified when I came to the first showing and found Jim Baskett was not there,'' said Ruth Warrick, one of the last surviving stars of the movie. She is best-known these days for her role as Phoebe on the TV soap opera All My Children.

''That just seems so impossible now,'' Warrick said.

Times have changed slowly -- some would say excruciatingly so -- and that era has disappeared even if more subtle forms of bigotry have not.

But Song of the South, combining live and animated actors, lives on and is back for a new generation. The movie that made Uncle Remus, Br'er Rabbit, the Tar Baby and the rest of the briar-patch crowd famous is appearing in theaters across the nation as part of a 40th anniversary celebration. In Central Florida, the film is showing at Park Triple Theatre, University 8 Cinema, Parkwood Plaza Cinema, Fashion Square Cinema, Interstate Mall 6 and Osceola Square 6.

A re-release premiere was held in Atlanta Nov. 15 with proceeds going to the restoration of Wren's Nest, the home of Joel Chandler Harris, the Atlanta newspaperman who created the Uncle Remus tales in the late 1800s.

Uncle Remus was a fictitious black man -- an old slave and philosopher -- who told the entertaining fables of the shrewd Br'er Rabbit and his counterparts with great relish and a black dialect straight from the Old South. A young white boy was his fictitious listener.

Harris insisted he was no author, but simply the compiler of stories. He grew up during the Civil War in Georgia and learned many of the tales from an old black man he called ''Uncle George.''

The stories first appeared as columns in the Atlanta Constitution, but later were syndicated nationwide and published in book form.

Walt Disney grew up listening to the Uncle Remus tales and long considered transforming the stories to the big screen. Song of the South -- Disney's first feature film with live actors -- premiered in 1946.

''Disney told me I was the first live actor he signed,'' Warrick said in a telephone interview. ''He said, 'You make me nervous.' I asked why and he said, 'Because if you don't do it the way I like, I can't rub you out' '' like he could a cartoon figure.

But Disney did not leave out animation. Song of the South blends live actors with cartoon characters and animated backgrounds for an intriguing effect.

The film is filled with music -- the snappy ''Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah'' is by far the best known melody to come out of the movie -- and fine performances. Baskett, who portrayed Uncle Remus, won an honorary Oscar for the role, but made no more movies before his death in 1948 of a heart ailment.

Popular as the tales have been, Uncle Remus always has been viewed rather suspiciously by blacks, many of whom felt insulted by the minstrel tradition of the stories and the movie.

Disney studios has traditionally re-released its classics -- Snow White, Bambi, Fantasia and the like -- every several years. But it withheld Song of the South during the civil-rights turmoil of the 1960s to avoid any controversy. The movie was previously re-released in 1956, 1972 and 1981.

The outcry has died down in recent years. Uncle Remus is still not a favorite of many blacks, but a closer look has tempered the anger. For instance, Harris was considered a liberal for his time and his descendants claim his main aim was to preserve black heritage.

''Some blacks felt it was degrading to depict slavery in any form on the screen and that's an understandable reaction,'' Warrick said. ''But slavery was a fact, a very sad fact and something that we should regret and be ashamed of.

''But the point of the picture is that Uncle Remus was the wise one. He was full of love, joy and humanity. He was the hero. The white folks were kind of stupid and foolish. As far as I'm concerned, this is a very pro-black representation.''

A representative for the NAACP in Washington said the organization fielded objections to Song of the South when it first premiered but has no current position on the movie.